


Rainbow Boy

by timeforteaaa



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Light Angst, M/M, light fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-14
Updated: 2017-10-14
Packaged: 2019-01-09 20:02:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12283419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/timeforteaaa/pseuds/timeforteaaa
Summary: In a world of black and white, Jongin wasn't expecting to see a rainbow.





	Rainbow Boy

**Author's Note:**

> this fic was written, proofed, and edited within the space of around six hours, so please excuse any mistakes! 
> 
> I hope you enjoy!

_Colours_ , Jongin thinks. He remembers them.

The sky was blue once. Grass was green. Sunflowers were the brightest yellow.

Strawberry cupcakes had pink and cream swirls, toy trains were painted vivd scarlet, and the soft towels in his bathroom were a dusky violet.

The world was filled with colours. Every last corner was splashed with light like the finest watercolour paintings.

How many years has it been?

Too many to count now. Jongin was just leaving his first stage of schooling when the war happened. When _they_ took over. When the world stopped being a pallet of brightness and excitement and instead turned to black.

Jongin can still remember being bundled away to have his colour vision removed.

He remembers his mother’s tear stained faced.

He remembers his sisters trembling.

He remembers returning home and feeling… empty.

The world became black and white. When Jongin’s sister had hugged him, he’d looked desperately at her hair. She’d dyed it bright, electric blue the week before the invasion.

 _Remember my hair, Nini, you remember it, right?_ She had whispered in his ear.

And Jongin does, just about. It’s the last scrap of evidence he has in his mind that beautiful colours were real. It’s fading, more like a distant memory, or a aftertaste on the tip of his tongue, but it’s there nonetheless.

His family had all eventually had their colour vision removed too. The world, it seems, had had its colour taken as well. There were no longer flowers or fair ground rides or anything to even teases a memory of colour out of you. Everything now is grey, ashen skies, charred tree branches and heaps of steaming rubbish.

Jongin misses them. His family and his colours. He misses happiness. He’d never noticed before, largely taken it for granted, that something as simple as a brightly painted picture could lift your mood. If you take away the colours, you take away the happiness.

That’s what they’ve done.

He can’t remember feeling happy. As Jongin lies in his grey room, with his grey walls in his grey bedsheets, he tries to feel. He tries to care about something.

 _Second tier education is very important_. He can almost hear the voices from the propaganda tapes parroting away.

And yet, so far away from home in an institute for boys, it doesn’t feel important. Nothing feels important anymore.

 

 

 

 

 

No one really knows who _they_ are.

News of an impending invasion came about two days before the actual invasion began.

Suddenly there were soldiers on the streets, fires, women and children running and screaming.

There were men in sleekly cut suits smiling down camera lenses. Reassuring everyone that everything will be ok, that this is simply to restore order. To restore uniformity.

 _Equality_. That’s what this was about. Supposedly.

Jongin walks to school along a dry, dusty road that links the accommodation quarters and the school’s teaching blocks. He doesn’t walk with anyone, even though the road is fairly busy with young boys, teenagers, like himself all heading in the same direction.

No one has friends, so no one walks together.

He kicks a stone under his foot. He thinks there’s supposed to be something important about today.

Jongin squints up at a cloudless sky. Nothing comes to him.

A bell echoes in the distance and Jongin picks his pace up, striding into the school block, up three flights of stairs and into his classroom.

A few people smile at him, the expression looking awkward and forced on their lips, and Jongin tries to smile back. His cheeks hurt, and he drops it as soon as he finds his seat towards the back.

He’s rummaging around in his bag for his pencil case when he feels someone approach the edge of his desk.

His teacher, a harrowed and thin faced man in his late forties, hovers awkwardly with the same fixed, out of place smile as Jongin’s classmates on his lips. “Happy 17th Birthday, Jongin.” He says hoarsely. His voice comes out as almost a whisper.

He places a cupcake on Jongin’s desk, and for a moment looks inexplicably sad. Then he turns on his heel and strides away to the front of the classroom where he begins shuffling around papers.

Jongin stares at the cupcake for some time. It’s his birthday. People don’t really celebrate those anymore.

He eyes the cake for a few more seconds before picking it up and giving the icing a tentative taste. It’s strawberry flavoured, so it should be pink and cream. Strawberry flavoured cupcakes have pink and cream swirls.

Jongin doesn’t want to know what his teacher had to do to get him this. It’s delicious, and Jongin swallows it down in great mouthfuls, feeling partly guilty at the longing looks of his classmates.

He savours the taste of the treat in his mouth for as long as he can, and for a moment, thinks he feels a fleeting heartbeat of happiness. The moment has gone in the moment he’s told to open his textbook, and just like that everything’s gone back to normal.

The hours pass as slowly and yet as quickly as they always do.

Jongin’s gaze starts to drift out of the window, his teacher’s voice drowned by a stream of meaningless thoughts.

And then he sees red.

 _Literally_ sees red.

Down in the courtyard Jongin just saw a flash of red. The colour red. Red like toy trains, ripe strawberries, scented roses. Red.

He stands up so quickly he disturbs the work on his table. Sheets of paper and books fly everywhere.

“Jongin?” His teacher says, looking at him over his glasses. “Are you alright?”

When Jongin looks back to the courtyard, the colour is gone. “Y-yeah. I just— I thought I saw something. I must have been mistaken. I’m sorry.” He says sheepishly, sitting down and gratefully taking his belongings from the classmates around him who have picked them up.

Part of Jongin’s mind thinks he was going insane. But the other part _knows_. After six years of no colour, Jongin is certain his mind couldn’t imagine a colour as vibrant as that. Scarlet red.

It sticks in his mind for the rest of the day.

 

 

 

 

 

For the rest of the week, Jongin dreams of red. Burgundy, ruby, crimson. Red.

He didn’t imagine it. He knows he didn’t.

By Friday, he’s so convinced in himself he sees it again.

He sees a flash of red when he’s walking into school, he sees it walking across the courtyard. _He isn’t wrong._

This time, Jongin runs after the colour.

“Hey! Hey!” He shouts, his backpack flying behind him, his tie whipped over his shoulder.

People are staring, looking at him oddly.

Jongin doesn’t stop, not until he realises he’s approaching the colour and he needs to slow down, shuddering to a stop.

It’s a boy. A boy is wearing the red— the red is a scarf. A long, trailing scarf draped over his shoulder.

Jongin clutches his arm, and doubles over, desperately trying to catch his breath. “W-wait.”

The boy looks a little bit frightened but Jongin tries to reassure him. “I-It’s— your, your—“ He stops his own sentence and looks at the boy properly.

His heart almost stops.

It’s not just the scarf.

It isn’t just the scarf that has colour.

Everything.

Everything about this boy is colourful. He’s a walking _rainbow_.

He’s wearing a teal green coat, the long red scarf, and orange and lime green striped shirt, purple corduroy trousers and lemon yellow trainers with electric blue laces. _Electric blue, the same as Minjung’s hair._

The boy has brown hair, brown eyes, red, pouty lips and the rosiest cheeks Jongin has ever seen.

Jongin stares.

The boy looks at him, more concerned for Jongin now than frightened. “Are you ok?” He says, voice deep and warm like heated honey.

Jongin gulps. The clothes clash horribly, there’s no co-ordination of colour but then why would there be? No one can see colours, so why does it matter.

And yet Jongin can. This boy is— “You’re a rainbow.” He says, out loud, aghast.

The boy frowns at him; thick, black eyebrows furrowing on his forehead. “Are you sure you’re alright?”

“I—“ Realisation washes over Jongin. He can’t tell him. He can’t say he can see colours. He can’t— they’ll know, and they might try to take them away. Jongin is greedy. He wants these colours to stay, they can’t take them. “Y-yeah I— I just thought you looked lost.”

The boy’s face lights up. “Oh!” He says cheerily. He cheeks slightly darken in colour and Jongin’s heart pounds. “I am a little, I have to admit. I only transferred here on Monday. It’d help if they could colour-code the map or someth—“ The boy stops and looks embarrassed.

Jongin nods frantically. “Y-yeah. It would. What class are you in?”

The boy flicks through some papers in his hands. “Um, Class 4B.”

Jongin’s heart sings. “T-that’s my class. You are going the wrong way, actually.” He rubs the back of his neck.

The boy looks embarrassed again. “Oh! I don’t suppose you could show me to where I’m supposed to be, could you?”

“I—I’d love too. I’m— I’m going there too, actually. Yeah.”

The boy nods, looking a bit worried again. It’s probably because Jongin still isn’t breathing right. He indicates that perhaps they should start walking. “I’m Kyungsoo, by the way.”

 _Kyungsoo_. Rainbow boy is Kyungsoo.

“I’m Jongin.”

Kyungsoo smiles, a broad grin stretching across his face and crinkling his eyes into crescents.

As they walk, something stirs in Jongin’s chest.

Hope.

This is what hope feels like.

 

 

 

 

 

Jongin keeps his secret to himself. He doesn’t breathe a word to a soul, not even Kyungsoo, and it makes him feel guilty. He keeps his secret for months.

He starts to wonder if there’s something wrong with him. If he’s got some sort of addiction.

He can’t get enough of colour.

He nearly sprints to school everyday, desperate to see what concoction of colour Kyungsoo will be decorated in today.

He finds him stealing glances at the boy all throughout their classes.

There’s just something about the way sunlight hits tortoiseshell glasses and highlights apricot t-shirts that brings back that now familiar thudding in Jongin’s heart. That feeling that he’s actually _living_ , rather than simply being alive.

Jongin thinks he and Kyungsoo are friends. They must be. They sit next to each other in every class, they eat their lunch together, they share the occasional secret. It’s the closest thing to what Jongin remembers as a friendship. They other boys eye them enviously every now and then, as if jealous of the connection.

The process towards their hesitant bond has been slow and halting, but that’s nothing that isn’t expected. They both have to learn to care about and trust another person again.

They’ve willingly worked at it though. They both know about each other’s pasts, that they did once have families, that they both remember what is was like when they could see colour.

Jongin flusters terribly whenever that line of conversation comes up. He doesn’t feel like lying to his newly found friend and instead favours changing the subject, metaphorically brushing it under the mat and hoping it never comes up again.

Eventually, on a sunny Friday, Jongin finally asks the question he’s been meaning to for about three months. “S-So, why did you transfer schools?” He says, squinting at Kyungsoo against the sun.

Then it’s Kyungsoo’s turn to become hesitant. He shuffles on the lunch bench where he sits next to Jongin and his cheeks are coloured. Pink. Champagne pink. “I— I was being bullied.”

Jongin chest immediately seizes, emotions he’d forgotten about crashing over him. Anger, frustration and… pain. “Why?”

“I, erm, I’m… I’m _attracted_ to… men. Other men.” Kyungsoo says awkwardly. “They didn’t like that.” He hurriedly picks up a yogurt and starts eating it, looking for an excuse not to talk.

“I—“ Jongin begins a sentence but stops. _I am too_ , he wants to say. At least… before the invasion, he’d been questioning that part of him. Afterwards it’s a fact about himself that Jongin had decided to forget about; it didn’t seem important anymore.

And yet suddenly now, _now_ it feels like possibly the most important statement of his life. He doesn’t know why. It’s weighted somehow, heavy on his shoulders.

Jongin doesn’t realise Kyungsoo is looking at him expectantly.

“I— _I am too_.” He rushes out over a breath.

Kyungsoo looks surprised, his eyes widening with his spoon still hanging in his mouth. “Oh.”

“Or… I think I was… before the invasion. So… I think I still am.”

Kyungsoo looks at him for what must be a solid ten seconds in silence. Then he smiles, a gentle, almost secret smile spreading across his face. “Ok.”

“Ok?” Jongin gulps.

“Ok.” Kyungsoo repeats. He returns back to his lunch wordlessly.

A crow squawks somewhere in the distance, and a curl of black smoke from a rubbish heap floats into that same cloudless sky.

Jongin coughs, mind whirring as he tries to think of another line of conversation, just to end the thick silence coating them. “You look good in green.” He says, eyeing the moss coloured jumper Kyungsoo’s has pulled on to warm him in the spring air.

Kyungsoo whips round to look at him, eyes wide.

His spoon clatters onto the tabletop.

“ _Green._ ” He whispers, and Jongin can’t tell if it’s aimed at him or if Kyungsoo is talking to himself.

It takes a second before Jongin suddenly realises what he’s said. What he’s _done_. He’s spilled the very secret he promised himself he wouldn’t. He slaps a hand over his mouth.

“Y-You— I don’t— That means you—“ Kyungsoo stammers, and Jongin can see the cogs whirring in his mind, frantically trying to catch up with the situation.

“I—I was just—! I can explain— I—“

“— _That means you can see them too_.”

Jongin’s heart stops. “W-What?”

Kyungsoo still looks aghast, and leans in conspiratorially, peering round him with wide eyes. “Y-You knew my jumper was green. How— You couldn’t have known that unless— unless you can see colour too.”

“I—I can’t. Not normally. But you— you’re in colour to me. Everything to do with you is colourful. I—I don’t know why.”

“From the moment you saw me?”

Jongin nods, dropping his voice as low as he can. “From the moment I saw you.”

“I— Me too. I can see you in colour. Nothing else. Just you. I know this jumper is green because it was my favourite before… before all this.” He gestures blandly around them.

“What does this mean?” Jongin murmurs. He’s frightened.

Kyungsoo senses it and picks up Jongin’s hand, locking their fingers together.

His hand is icy cold, and Jongin instinctively squeezes in the hopes of heating him up.

“I don’t know. I don’t know, but I think… I think we’re going to be alright.”

 

 

 

 

 

There’s been a rebellion brewing.

It’s been six months to the day since Kyungsoo and Jongin met that the news comes through.

It starts out as rumours, whispers in the courtyard, notes passed in classes, people starting to ask questions they never normally would.

Then it spreads, first one minor news channel, then a newspaper, then another then another. Reports fly in, saying that the rebels are gaining ground, they’re capturing the leaders, they’re going to march on the president’s office soon.

The propaganda machines go into overdrive, starting to reassure the public that there is no rebellion, there is peace and stability as normal. There is no need to panic, and a reminder that rebelling against the new regime will lead to certain death.

It’s starting to look too thin.

Everyone knows now.

Everyone can see the frantic and stressed look of the news reporters. The deep, heavy circles under the presidential aide’s eyes.

The teachers start muttering in low voices in the corridors. The sentences change from ‘what if there’s a liberation attempt’ to a ‘when the liberation happens’.

Every night Jongin sits on his creaky dormitory bed, with Kyungsoo at his side, fiddling with a rusty old radio. They pick up rebel broadcasts. They’re close to the school, they’re gaining on the capital, and surely this must be ending soon.

 _The colours are coming back_ , they say.

In total, it takes about another two weeks for the rebel army to reach the school.

Jongin sees them out of the window as they come streaming into the courtyard, pouring out of vans labelled **REFUGEES**.

The teacher’s leap into action, broad grins on their faces as they direct the students. “Stay calm everyone! Stay calm!” They cry, but Jongin can see them struggling to internalise their elation.

Soldiers storm into classrooms, barking out orders.

Jongin picks up on certain things as he seizes hold of Kyungsoo’s hand, cries of “Quickly!” and “We need to get you out before the government forces get here!”

He can feel nothing except the pounding of his heart, the sick feeling of excitement in his stomach, and Kyungsoo’s hand in his as they sprint down stairways.

They’re bundled into the back of one of the vans, packed in with what seems like another fifty boys.

The van pulls away at breakneck speed, making Jongin grip onto Kyungsoo like a lifeline.

As they speed down roads, taking bumps heavily, Jongin grins.

He turns to Kyungsoo, who wordlessly reaches up, cups his face and presses a soft, chaste kiss to his lips.

They pull back and both turn pink.

Jongin interlaces their fingers, and that thudding in his heart makes a reappearance.

They don’t have time to be labelling this… whatever this relationship is at the minute, but they both acknowledge that it’s something important. There’ll be time for it later.

They still have so many questions, about the colours, what’s special about them, what will happen, but there’s a certainty at the back of Jongin’s mind now.

They’re going to be ok. They’ve got a future in this, together. They’re going to be alright. They’ve got each other.

The colours are coming back. _And_ , Jongin thinks as Kyungsoo lays his head on his shoulder, _so is love_.

 

 

 

 

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